[Music] on March 19th 2003 US forces LED an invasion of Iraq to top of the brutal dictator Saddam Hussein the list of monstrous things Saddam had done was long and allegations that he had new chemical weapons offered easy justification of America's intervention saddam's regime fell within a month but a stubborn Insurgency soon erupted that made the US extend its occupation for the country for another eight long years throughout the invasion and occupation the US would rack up its own list of abuses crimes and massacres to rival saddams and which continue to haunt the US and
Iraq to this day in this video we'll see how prisoners were suffocated to death whole families murdered and children left with horrific deformities all at the hands of the American Military like every American war the backbone of the second Gulf was bombing rather than the saturation bombing of the 20th century the US favored Precision strikes in Iraq some 2third of all Munitions dropped by the US during the war were laser guided which the US believed would minimize collateral damage the US also conducted collateral damage assessments on nearly every air strike a precaution that was hardly
the norm in previous bombing campaigns while it is true that civilian collateral casualties were ultimately lower in Iraq than in previous Wars it was still far from zero a chief reason for this was what the US called time sensitive targeting or emerging targets basically this meant conducting an air strike on short notice when Intel suggested the location of a high value Target such as Saddam himself or a leading military official by the end of 2003 over 50 of these attacks had been carried out but zero of them had actually killed their Target in most cases
it couldn't even be established whether the target had really been there at all the First Act of aggression during the war was an example of this in the early hours of March 20th the US struck the Ura Farm outside Baghdad where intelligence had suggested Saddam had a bunker however the intel was wrong no evidence of Saddam at the site was ever found but 15 civilians were wounded in the attack with one of them dying in another time-sensitive attack on April 5th the US struck a building in Downtown bass where they believe that Lieutenant General alhassan
al- maid nicknamed chemical Ali for his role in using chemical weapons on Kurdish victims for saddam's regime was hiding once again the intel was wrong and Ali was not there the force of the explosion destroyed the building and several surrounding houses killing 17 civilians some as young as 5 years old probably the deadliest example of these attacks came on April 7th when the US dropped a two 2,000lb bomb on a house in the Alman Ser District of Baghdad communication intercepts suggested that Saddam was there but these proved incorrect it took just 45 minutes between the
US gaining the information and the bomb hitting its Target far too little time to do any real collateral damage assessments especially for such a powerful bomb in a crowded area as a result 18 civilians were killed and multiple buildings were flattened critic noted that the strike was based on phone signals which could narrow down a location to 100 m at best which left a huge margin for error in such a densely populated city determining the truth about air strikes proved difficult when the US and Iraqi sources differed over what actually happened for example on May
19th 2004 the US reportedly engaged a camp of insurgents near the village of maed in anbar Province they conducted an air strike on the alleged Camp before ground troops engag the residents in a firefight however Iraqi sources claimed it was no Insurgent camp at all but a wedding the gunfire reported by the Americans was actually from a common Middle Eastern practice of firing weapons in the air at weddings video evidence allegedly taken at the camp showed the wedding guests dancing hours before the attack the US maintains that the wedding story is false and that the
mukara attack was a legitimate one America's bombing strategy was also criticized for the use of other weapons white phosphorus is a deadly incendiary weapon whose use is considered a war crime by many nations although it is not fully prohibited the US insisted that it did not use white phosphorus on human Targets in Iraq but it did use it to dislodge enemy combatants soldiers often used white phosphorus alongside explosive barges in a combin they dubbed shake and bake and accusations of soldiers and civilians being hit with the weapon were several white phosphorus was just one of
many potential dangerous chemicals used by the US that could leave a lasting impact on the environment and its inhabitants and that impact was harrowing following the start of the invasion doctors in Iraq began noticing something horrifying the rate of deformities and still births was increasing doctors began monitoring the phenomenon on which are months and those lucky few who survived faced lives of incredible difficulty the city of fua was the epicenter of this crisis but the children of fucha phenomenon was seen across Iraq by 2009 doctors estimated that for every 1,000 live births in fua 144
of them had deformities a rate higher than that of Hiroshima following the atomic bombs in addition higher rates of cancer were seen in in children and adults in many of the same places that the deformities appeared a 2010 study determined that rates of Childhood Cancer were 12 times higher following the arrival of US forces in fuah the causes of these deformities is thought to be the toxic chemicals left over from Munitions and other military activity that polluted the environment of Iraq studies of Iraq populations in areas where deformities were highest noted higher concentrations of mercury
lead Arsenic and other substances known to produce several health problems and prevent the healthy development of fetuses the use of depleted uranium rounds by US forces left behind a radioactive Legacy that was another obvious cause of the health issues the US practice of burn pits in Iraq where trash was dumped into giant fires that could burn for months or years at a time also released harmful chemicals that were absorbed into the environment the scale of the damage even affected a American veterans soldiers exposed to burn pits depleted uranium Munitions and other substances demonstrated significant health
issues after the war thousands of veterans had been diagnosed with Gulf War syndrome which was widely agreed to have been caused by exposure to the same harmful chemicals that have harmed the Iraqis those civilian deaths were largely unintentional but there was plenty of intentional criminality by the US us too especially towards prisoners for all their denunciations of saddam's Cruelty the US had no qualms about reopening his Infamous Abu grab prison in August 2003 it was supposed to house the most serious criminals of the Saddam regime and those who had the most valuable information that needed
to be extracted by any means necessary in the words of Captain William Pon of the human intelligence efforts coordination cell the gloves are coming off regarding these detainees the US skirted the bounds of the Geneva Convention with internal memos and training material instructing staff on why the Geneva Convention did not apply to their prisoners rather than teaching them how to act in accordance with it a plethora of torture methods were used on victims electrocution water boarding sleep deprivation mutilation and sexual humiliation among many others were alleged even religion was used for torture with mostly Muslim
inmates reportedly being forced fed pork and liquor and having their K confiscated by prison guards one interrogator later said that as long as no prisoners came up dead pretty much anything was permitted as sergeant Walters came forward about his experience working in Abu gra prison he described how prisoners would be brought in on trucks blindfolded and stripped naked while guard sh it all around them it was standard policy to order guards not to interact with the prisoners in any friendly manner to make sure they felt as isolated as possible torture was used as soon as
possible after The Prisoner arrived while they were still scared confused and unfamiliar with this new environment his testimony aligns with that of prison inmates like Amin SED Alik who entered the prison in October 2003 he remembered being coralled into into a cell and stripped while soldiers shouted at him promising him torture and death if he did not comply in another us pron Iraqi General Abed Hamed maush went to inquire about the arrest of his sons by US forces only for the Americans to immediately arrest him and make him confess to commanding an Insurgent group The
interrogators then staged a mock execution of one of his sons before wrapping maoo in a sleeping bag and sitting on his chest until he suffocated the interrogator warrant officer Lewis well shuffer was put on trial for his death but faced only a $6,000 fine and 60 days of house arrest for negligent homicide the US broke torture down to a science soldiers openly discussed with Incredible Precision the best torture methods to get prisoners to talk one soldier recommended quote open-handed facial slaps from a distance of no more than about 2 ft and backhanded blows to the
midsection from a distance of about 18 in this should be a minimum Baseline Behavioral Science teams were secretly involved and are believed to have directed torture to study the effects of human psychology especially sexual humiliation where prisoners were stripped naked and mocked or forced to wear women's clothes often in front of female guards alongside military intelligence and military police plain clothed CIA agents also worked out of Abu grabe these agents were given privileged access to Iraqi prisoners with a no questions asked policy their interrogations were especially brutal after one such interrogation prison staff entered the
room after the CIA agent left to find the prisoner Madel Al jadas hanging dead in a shower from his handcuffed wrists with blood gushing from his mouth on top of this were the Pentagon special access program sap a top secret black Ops group Dawn from members of various forces groups who were dedicated to hunting down bin ladin and Al-Qaeda they were believed to be operating at Abu grabe and were so violent that even the CIA refused to work with them sap did much of its work out of Camp Nama near Baghdad one Anonymous member described
their most harrowing tortures taking place in the black room where every second of a prisoner's life would be made miserable prisoners were kept standing with constant loud noises to deprive them of sleep strobe lights flaring constantly and covered in cold water to keep their bodies in shivering pain attempted investigations into the Sap's actions were hamstrung when the group's computers experienced a miraculous computer error that destroyed all of their files the treatment of prisoners in Iraq especially in Abu grabe was so bad that by 2004 whistleblowers had stepped forward to tell the public about the action
although a scandal followed and 11 soldiers were charged with various crimes allegations of prisoner abuse continued for the rest of the American presence in Iraq there were also examples of soldiers demonstrating intentional cruelty on Iraqi civilians several of these massacres grabbed Global headlines and turned public opinion heavily against the war among the first was the hadam massacre in 2005 while patrolling near the village of hadatha on November 19th Lance corporal Miguel TJ Tzus was killed by a roadside bomb shortly after the Marines in his Squad reported a firefight with insurgents in local houses they listed
eight insurgents Dead from the firefight and 15 civilians plus tasas as casualties from the bomb however investigations soon contradicted this story locals insisted that the Marines had begun a rampage after the explosion and they had been the ones to kill the civilians after after the blast killed tazes his fellow Marines had stopped a nearby taxi with five unarmed men and shot them dead apparently in Revenge for the death of their friend the Marines then claimed they took fire from three nearby houses although only one rifle was found in them with no evidence that it was
ever fired and proceeded to clear them first With Grenades and then sweeping through with small arms killing everyone they found 24 civilians were killed the story quickly reached the media and an investigation was launched several Marines were court marshaled but the charges were dropped before trial for all except the staff sergeant who led the operation he was convicted of dereliction of Duty demoted and had his pay cut but faced no further punishment the senseless Slaughter of dozens of civilians with no accountability led the hadam massacre to be nicknamed the Iraqi Mele a similar incident occurred
in September 2007 this time involving the Blackwater private military company several private security companies were contacted to support the invasion in Iraq and on September 16th 2007 Blackwater was tasked with escorting a US state department Convoy through bdad after arriving in niss square a car allegedly approached the Convoy and ignored orders to stop the Blackwater forces opened fire but what happened next is a matter of Who You Believe according to Blackwater they engaged the car which they believed to be a suicide bomber and then began taking fire from multiple directions including from the local Iraqi
forces and the crowd Blackwater returned fire and killed several targets before retreating the Iraqi version is different there was indeed a car that refused to stop but the occupants were a mother and her son who seemed not to have heard the order Blackwater opened fire with such force that the Iraqi forces believed they were under attack and so returned fire recordings from Blackwater Channel suggest they genuinely believe they were under attack but there is no evidence that anyone in the crowd was actually doing so amidst this confusion Blackwater gunned down 17 civilians its license to
operate in Iraq was suspended in 2009 but charges against the men involved were dismissed that same year only in 2014 were four Blackwater employees charged and jailed for their actions before being pardoned by President Trump in 2020 to condemnation from Iraq the UN and the families of the victims hadatha and Nur Square were the largest massacres but the case of the mamudi attack was arguably the most horrifying in 2016 14-year-old abir kasim Hamza aljanabi lived Liv in the village of usfia a few miles west of al- mudia along with her parents and three siblings they
were only a few hundred M from a US checkpoint manned by six soldiers of the 502nd Infantry Regiment far from feeling protected a beer and her family were scared of the soldiers and for good reason for several months the soldiers had been behaving inappropriately towards a beer they would stare at her shout comments at her and generally make her feel uncomfortable in one instance the soldiers conducted a random search of her house where one of them started caressing the young girl's face aer's family were concerned and were considering moving her to her uncle's house elsewhere
in the village but unfortunately they would never get the chance on the afternoon of March 12th after a busy morning of drinking card games and boasting about killing Iraqis four of the soldiers led by private Steve Green made their way to a Beer's house a beer her parents and her younger sister were there while her brothers were in school the soldiers burst into the home and immediately assaulted the Family beating the mother so badly that they broke her arms green and another Soldier then restrained the family while the other two soldiers took a beer into
the next room and did what rampaging soldiers often do to unprotected young girls while a beer was abused in the Next Room green shot both the parents and the youngest girl green then rejoined his comrade with a beer where he described his murder of her family as quote awesome before abusing a beer with the blood of her family still on his hands when he was done green raised his rifle and shot a beer dead too the soldiers then set the house on fire to cover the evidence of their crimes and as they described it went
off to celebrate with chicken wings the fire attracted the attention of the rest of the village including a Beer's uncle and her two brothers returning from school they managed to extinguish the Blaze and discover the family's remains before contacting the Iraqi authorities us authorities immediately blamed insurgents in the area for the attack and a preliminary investigation reached the same conclusion privately though green and his accomplices boasted about their crimes to fellow Soldiers green described how little he cared about killing Iraqis over here killing people is like squashing an ant I mean you kill somebody and
it's like all right let's go get some pizza multiple soldiers heard about the crimes and failed to report it it took until June when private first class Justin watt heard about the crimes for anyone to report the truth to their superiors green who had since been honorably discharged for mental health reasons his three accomplices and two other soldiers who had failed to report their knowledge of the crime were soon arrested over the following months all four of the soldiers involved in the crime were Court marshaled charged with rape and murder and each ultimately sentenced to
between 90 and0 years in prison with the exception of green who received life in prison another soldier at the checkpoint was given 27 months for his role in covering up the crime and another Soldier was discharged it was small consolation for the survivors of the family and the Iraqi people Green's attitude of casual violence and dehumanization was problem throughout US forces Iraq as it had been in Vietnam and other American wars which enabled many of the crimes we've discussed in this video at least 7,000 Iraqi civilians were killed during the initial Invasion but far more
died in the yearslong occupation afterwards exact casualty figures for the entire Iraq war are disputed with estimates ranging from 100,000 to 1 million most of them civilian and most of them directly or in indirectly caused by the United States being the world's Undisputed Global hegemon at the time America was immunized from any accountability that did not flow from outrage within its own borders so long as the American people were kept happy American servicemen and women could be confident they would get away with it the military was also reluctant to turn on its own the excuses
and coverups seen in mudia hadatha and elsewhere were proof of this with American authorities trying to dismiss anything that contradicted their own image of themselves as a uniquely moral and Noble military force but time has brought to light the cost of toppling Saddam and the false claims made to justify the initial Invasion today the majority of Americans believe the Iraq War was a mistake with many veterans sharing this view still it seems unlikely that those who urged and directed the conflict with its dub justifications and controversial execution will ever face consequences for what they did
is for what they did is for
